Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress with the Annual Message of the President, December 2, 1872, Part II, Volume V

No. 73.

[Extracts.]

Lord John Russell to Lord Lyons.

Foreign Office, August 24, 1859.

The Earl of Aberdeen, to whom I have referred, informs me that he distinctly remembers the general tenor of his conversation with Mr. MacLane on the subject of the Oregon boundary, and it *is certain that it was the intention of the treaty to adopt the mid-channel of the straits as the line of demarkation, without any reference to islands, the position, and, indeed, the very existence, of which had hardly, at that time, been accurately ascertained; and he has no recollection of any mention having been made during the discussion of the Canal de Haro, or, indeed, any other channel than those described in the treaty itself.[112]The British government announces its intention of obtaining the island o San Juan.

I also inclose a memorandum drawn up by Sir Richard Pakenham, the negotiator of the treaty of 1846. * * *

The adoption of the central channel would give to Great Britain the island of San Juan, which is believed to be of little or no value to the United States, while much importance is attached by British colonial authorities, and by Her Majesty’s government, to its retention as a dependency of the colony of Vancouver’s Island.

Her Majesty’s government must, therefore, under any circumstances, maintain the right of the British Crown to the island of San Juan. The interests at stake in connection with the retention of that island are too important to admit of compromise, and your lordship will consequently bear in mind that whatever arrangement as to the boundary line is finally arrived at, no settlement of the question will be accepted by Her Majesty’s government which does not provide for the island of San Juan being reserved to the British Crown.

J. RUSSELL.

Lord Lyons, &c., &c., &c.

Sir Richard Pakenham on the Water Boundary under the Oregon treaty of 1846.

I have examined the papers put into my hands, by Mr. Hammond, relating to the line of boundary to be established between the British and the United States possessions on the northwest coast of America, and I have endeavored to call to mind any circumstance which might have occurred at the time when the Oregon treaty was concluded (15th June, 1846) of a nature either to strengthen or invalidate the pretension now put forward by the United States Commissioner, to the effect that the boundary contemplated by the treaty would be a line passing down the middle of the channel called Canal de Haro, and not, as suggested on the part *of Great Britain, along the middle of the channel called Vancouver’s or Rosario Strait, neither of which two lines could, as I conceive, exactly fulfill the conditions of the treaty, which, according to their literal tenor, would require the line to be traced along the middle of the channel (meaning, I presume, the whole intervening space) which separates the continent from Vancouver’s Island. And I think I can safely assert that the treaty of 15th June, 1846, was signed and ratified without any intimation to us whatever, on the part of the United States Government, as to the particular direction to be given to the line of boundary contemplated by article I of that treaty.Sir R. Pakenham in 1859 denies the Rosario to be the channel of the treaty.[113]

All that we knew about it was that it was to run “through the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver’s Island, and thence southerly through the middle of the said channel and of Fuca’s Straits to the Pacific Ocean.”

It is true that in a dispatch from Mr. MacLane, then United States minister in London, to the Secretary of State, Mr. Buchanan, dated 18th May, 1846, which dispatch, however, was not made public until after the ratification of the treaty by the Senate, Mr. MacLane informs his government that the line of boundary about to be proposed by Her Majesty’s government would “probably be substantially to divide the territory by the extension of the line in the parallel of 49° to the sea, that is to say, to the arm of the sea called Birch’s Bay, thence by the Canal de Haro and straits of Fuca to the ocean.”

It is also true that Mr. Senator Benton, one of the ablest and most zealous advocates for the ratification of the treaty, (relying, no doubt, on the statement furnished by Mr. MacLane,) did, in his speech on the subject, describe the intended line of boundary to be one passing along the middle of the Haro channel.

But, on the other hand, the Earl of Aberdeen, in his final instructions, dated 18th May, 1846, says nothing whatever about the Canal de Haro, but, on the contrary, desires that the line might be drawn “in a southerly direction through the center of King George’s Sound and the Straits of Fuca to the Pacific Ocean.”Sir R. Pakenham misstates Lord Aberdeen’s instruction by suppressing his description of the channel of the treaty.

It is my belief that neither Lord Aberdeen, nor Mr. MacLane, nor Mr. Buchanan possessed at that time a sufficiently accurate knowledge of the geography or hydrography of the region in question to enable them to define more accurately what was the intended line of boundary than is expressed in the words of the *treaty, and it is certain that Mr. Buchanan signed the treaty with Mr. MacLane’s dispatch before him, and yet that he made no mention whatever of the “Canal de Haro” as that “through which the line of boundary would run, as understood by the United States government.”[114]

My own dispatch of that period contains no observation whatever of a tendency contrary to what I thus state from memory, and they, therefore, so far, plead in favor of the accuracy of my recollection.